Welcome back to New Thinkery. I'm David Barr and with me as always is Alex Preyoh. How are you Alex? How are you David?
I'm well. I'm excited for our guest today. You know why? Why's that?
Like he's Greg's boss. And so if the show goes poorly, Greg won't get a bonus. He may not even advance in his career and if things go swimmingly, we get on fire. Well, it's a lot of work.
I thought you said that those kind of jokes were low-hanging fruit for you. What are you doing? Well Greg, I'm a low-hanging fruit kind of guy. How are you doing?
I'm very well. Thanks. The semester just ended. I'm in the middle of grading.
I think Alex is going to be finished today. Yeah. And so will you be shaving the beard for the summer months? I ask you this every single episode.
I have run out of excuses not to shave at this point. Yes. Yeah. So who do we have with us today, Greg?
Well, we have, you've already mentioned we have Jeff Sickinger. Actually, how do you pronounce your name? Sickinger. No, I meant, is it Jeff-a-for-g-for?
I tell everybody, are you why? Greg has been trying that joke out for the past week. Do you think it's how it's David? Do you think it's better work?
Yeah, Greg, it'll be good. All right. So we have my friend Jeff Sickinger, who's also professor of political science here at Ashland University and also the executive director of the Ashbrook Center. So welcome Jeff.
It's good to have you here. I'm delighted to be here with you guys. Thanks for joining us. No.
So I'll just jump in. Jeff, I think one of the first things we usually like to do with folks that we have on the show is just have them tell us a little about themselves for the audience at home. How do they get interested in what they do? What sort of books are important to them?
What teachers are important to them? Where did you study with whom? That sort of stuff. So tell us a little about yourself.
Yeah. So I was born and raised in Muskegon, Michigan, Western Michigan, hence the Dutch last name, everybody's Dutch there. And in fact, there's a sickinger road. There's so many Dutch people there.
And but I decided I didn't want to go in state to college. So I looked around and fell in love with the University of Virginia as soon as I got on the grounds and saw how beautiful it was and thought Thomas Jefferson started this place. I thought I have to go. So I was under grad there and in my third year came across an interesting and intelligent man of some learning, Jim Caesar, who I know you've had on your show before.
We've had them on the show. Yeah. Yeah. And it was Caesar who really showed me what thinking is by just reading good texts and thinking about them with each other.
And I fell in love with it in my third and fourth year studying with Jim. A quick question about UVA, Jeff, before we go any further, I've been on the campus. I once dated. No, no, you've been on the grounds.
Okay. So is it true that Jeffers, I can't recall. I don't know if this is a false memory. I know you guys have a statue of Homer, but is Homer looking right at Jefferson?
No, he's looking down the lawn toward the Rotunda. Okay. Jefferson's not on the other side. Jefferson's on the other side, but Jefferson is facing out on the other side of Rotunda.
So they're not looking at each other. Okay. That's interesting. You know, we had Jim Caesar on the show and he was just great fun.
He's entertaining. He's smart. He's witty. He's fast.
What was he like having him as a teacher, most of the great, you know, team classes with him for years? First time I met Jim, someone told me go find Caesar and ask him about this class that I wanted to get in, walked into his office. There were, there was nobody in the office. The door was wide open.
Light was on. Absolutely stacks and piles of books, magazines, you name it, everything stacked up. It looked like someone was clearing out the office and throwing everything away. I said, hello, Mr.
Caesar. Mr. Caesar. Anybody here?
Didn't hear anything started to walk out and I heard this muffled, I'm down here. He was on the floor reading. That was my introduction to Jim Caesar. He had been down to look for something.
Saw an interesting book. Thought this is interesting. I'm just going to start reading. And there he was lying under his desk, reading a book.
That's funny. Yeah. What were the classes you took with him? I took, so I was in this strange, the government honors program.
So you took one semester, all you did was study one subject. So I actually studied American politics with him. And we read, well, we read TOEFL. We read the Federalist.
We read Lincoln. And we did, and we read some other kind of secondary sources. But it was my first time really realizing there's a lot more going on in a text than what first appears. Yeah, change my life.
Go on. Did you continue your doctoral studies at UVA? No, Caesar said if you want to go study political philosophy, there's a few places. And he sort of sent me to three or four places to talk with folks.
And I went up to University of Toronto, and Cliff Orr went in Tom Pangal. We're there at the time together. And Caesar said they are phenomenal. You really got to talk with them.
I sat down and talk with Tom Pangal, had lunch with him. And I said, so I was kind of a cocky 21 year old kid. He thought he knew things. And I said, Tom Pangal, you can imagine.
I said, so what's your latest project? What are you working on? He looked at me and he said, I'm studying the good life. That was one another one of those moments.
I realized, I don't know what I'm talking about. And I need to study with this guy. Yeah, excellent. That's fantastic.
So today, Jeff, you decided you would walk us through a little bit at Tocqueville. So I guess just a few questions. Why did you choose Tocqueville to do? And tell us we have our listeners are sort of wide ranging.
We have some people who probably written the stations on Tocqueville and we have people who've never heard the name. So just some general overview. What should folks know about this guy and why did you choose his book, Democracy in America? Yeah, so I teach the senior capstone class, all of our Ashbrook scholars at AU, sort of an honors program in history and politics.
They all take the senior class in the fall. And I always teach Tocqueville. It's called human being and citizen. And we start the first word and try to get all the way through to the last word.
Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. But it strikes me as such a critical part of their education. I don't really think they can understand what it means to live in a modern democratic age and be a modern democratic human being unless they've read Tocqueville. So we sort of round out their education that way.
I'm not a Tocqueville expert. I'm a dabbler. No question about it. There are many other minds.
Harvey Mansfield and Jim Caesar come immediately to mind as people who actually know Tocqueville's mind. I just get occasional glimpses of it. But it's great fun to have those glimpses. And Jim, I've been doing this for years.
What's that? You've been doing this for years. I mean, you'd sort of, you're in your out teaching Tocqueville. I still just get glimpses.
Look, you got any, even just a momentary glimpse of Tocqueville is worth its weight and goal. You know, it's funny. I was talking to another, I had another angle or when student as a professor in graduate school who remarked to me that she took Democracy in America, I think with Orman, I can't recall. But she, at first, she just thought that the book would be kind of superficial.
And it would lock the kind of depth that you would find in a plato. But that is not that the book was kind of revealed to her over time through Orwin as being this amazing wellspring of profundity and that it does come to you in kind of lightning bolts with a good teacher. Yeah. And I didn't have the good fortune of taking Tocqueville with Orwin Orman orkangol.
So I kind of had to learn it myself and teach myself, which is a good way. But I wish I hadn't able to take it with them. Took a lot of great classes with them. And remember very, very deeply.
First time I was in a class with Cliff, I said something in class. And he paused and he looked at me and he said, do you want to reconsider that? He was famous for sort of grading papers with Acid, Inc. Yeah.
So I opened up my copy of Tocqueville to read for today. And it's been so long. I've got a piece of sheet music in here and I can't even remember the last time I played piano. So I'm like, this has got to be like coming on a decade since I looked at this.
And I was just reading the introduction. And I was, I forgot just how beautifully he writes, how engaging he is, how much life there is to the rhetoric and everything. So I thought maybe we could just start with, I found the introduction, which is one of the things you had us look at prior to talking here, this talk of the great democratic revolution, how it's been happening secretly for centuries, you know, really, I mean, it's almost half a millennium, I think he has obsessed since the 1100s, right? So why don't you take us through that way?
What he's talking about it and what he sees going on? Yeah, he remarks at the very beginning that nothing attracted his attention during his stay in the United States, more than equality of conditions. And then he goes on in the introduction to talk about, you know, when that hit him and he says, at that moment, I can see the idea of the book you are going to read, a great democratic revolution is taking place among us. So on the one hand, of course, what he means is the downfall of aristocracy and its replacement by democracy, sometimes with revolutionary violence, like in France, and sometimes just over time and fits and starts everywhere else in the world that isn't experiencing some kind of violent revolution.
And then place like the United States, which according to Tocqueville has essentially always been democratic. The revolution came there fully born. It's a full fledged democracy. But equality of conditions is the foundation of democracy as he lays it out.
And really the core essential characteristic of democracy. And he goes in an introduction to say, essentially, every development since about the 12th century, 13th century has led to greater and greater equality of conditions or less inequality of conditions. For example, every scientific advancement has led to the equality of conditions. And Tocqueville says, take one example, firearms, sounds like it first just like it's a military weapon.
But when you think about it, it levels the playing field. Ordinary people with guns can kill lots of armed knights. Think of Mark Twain's Connecticut, Yankee and Carrefers Court, right? It shows that all of these things tend in one direction only to tell if it says, and that is increasing the quality of conditions.
So the question is, what's going to be come of that politically? And he says, inevitably, eventually, a great democratic revolution. aristocracy is going away. This is the middle of 19th century, of course.
And in Europe, aristocracy still exists. It's still powerful. In France, it's kind of this weird post-French revolutionary situation where there's some aristocracy and a lot of democracy mixed together. But heresocracy is not coming back.
And he makes that clear at the very beginning. The democratic revolution is here. It's happening. It's just a matter of time before all places have to face the question.
Not, are we going to be democracy? What kind of democracy are we going to be? Jeff, I'm a quick, oh, sorry, go on, Greg, go on. This is a small point on this point.
So I was struck by the first time I read this, even the emergence of the clergy as a class, he says, well, sort of is furthering this equality of conditions. I just remember thinking when I first read this as a kid, I thought, this seems awfully, how is that not aristocratic or the rule of a few or something like this? But so even the emergence of this priestly class, I think I persuaded by Tocqueville. But even that is a move to democracy.
So I don't know. It's fascinating. Gunpowder is sort of, I see that easily. You know, pretty impressed.
I see that. But even the emergence of a learned religious class somehow is tending toward democracy. Yeah, Christianity is a great introducer of equality of conditions, theologically, as he says, right? Everybody needs, everybody's a sinner and everybody needs God.
And the priesthood is open to everybody. And when priests hold that much power, the most powerful nobles have to bow before them. In a way, it seems like what he's saying, quickly from wrong, that because you come to America, there isn't all this infrastructure and everything, you know, set up the conditions, the material conditions, bring out in a more pronounced fashion, this trend that's happening throughout Europe, right? Because everybody just has to struggle to survive.
We're starting also on a much more level playing field, even if you're wealthy, you really have to really work hard and there's a kind of leveling effect of that. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting part of the fact that right after the introduction, he talks about the geography of North America and makes it clear that even the geography is democratic. You got to you can work hard. You have to work hard.
But if you do, it can be productive. And there's things like rivers, which allows people movement. So you can go from one place to another and spread out in this democratic way and not be locked into the old feudal system, which never really gets a foothold in part because of the geography. So if you combine this modern movement across centuries of equality of conditions with the geography of North America, and then as he says, the physiognomy of the Puritans who first settled America, who were fundamentally democratic people, if you put all that together, America has not had even the seed of aristocracy according to him.
Jeff, I have a quick question that's always puzzled me about the intro before we move on. He terms the equality of conditions as the primary fact, in terms of the primary fact, then he describes it as a generative fact from which each particular fact seemed to issue. And only a page later, a call to providential fact. And so do you know what he's doing?
I don't mean to put you on the spot, but this has always kind of tripped me up, especially the providential aspect of it. But is this a what's he doing with twerically or is there more at play? That's a really good question. Later on, he'll talk about the accidental or providential causes.
That's the title of a section of the book, Private Accidental or Providential Causes that Sustained Democracy in America. And I, you know, among many things, I think this book is a very profound meditation on divine providence. But here, the primary fact, you know, it's the first thing that hits you, as he says, but it's not just the first thing that hits you, it's generative, in the sense that everything as he says later in the second volume, everything that equality does not create it modifies. And so it and we we it is or should be taken as providential, because everything is moving in one direction.
And he goes on to say, it must be God's will then that democracy comes. So this is where I don't mean to skip ahead, but I'll forget, I'll forget my question. Really quick, he says it's providential. And then we'll talk about this toward the tail end of our discussion about democracies, drift into kind of despotism, if we're not careful.
How does that map on to what we understand is a providence? It's equality of conditions is providential, sweeping through, we tend to think of this word as tied to like a beneficence of the divine. And then it can reverse itself into a kind of tyranny over the soul is established. I think it raises the question, what's God up to?
Okay. Yeah. So I mean, we can talk about it, but he begins the book. It's interesting, right?
He begins the book in the introduction with this statement of providential fact, he ends the book by bringing God back in and raises the question, is this in fact, God's will for us? And at one point, even says, maybe it is, but it makes me sad that aristocracy and the aristocratic human being is going away. So I think there's a really interesting theological meditation happening. And maybe a kind of tragic view that Tofil has of democracy, you know, it's here and it's here to stay is that good or bad.
You mind if I actually, this is skipping ahead in the round show, but you might if I just read a little bit of that from the end of Democracy America Force, I should mention, by the way, I guess that you mentioned Harvey Mansfield, where actually, I think all four of us are using his translation with his deceased wife, Delve Winthrop's, their translation with the University of Chicago Press, I'm on page 674, which is volume two, part four chapter eight, I'm just going to skip around a little bit. So that's page 674 again. This is one of the things that Jeff, you mentioned you want to talk about. And so I, and since you're already there, I'd like to pick it up a little bit.
Top of the page 674, I see Tofil, I see that goods and evils are split equally enough in the world. Great wealth is disappearing. The small, excuse me, the number of small fortunes is increasing, skipping down into the next paragraph. One scarcely encounters very learned men, or very ignorant populations.
Genius becomes rarer and enlightenment's more common. The human mind is developed by the combined small efforts of all men, and not by the powerful and portion of some of them, skipping down a little more. Almost, almost all extremes become milder and softer. Almost all prominent points are worn down to make a place for something middling, that is at once less high and less low, less brilliance and less obscure than what we used than what used to be seen in the world.
I let my regard wander over this innumerable crowd composed of similar beings in which nothing is elevated and nothing lowered. The spectacle of this universal uniformity saddens and chills me, and I am tempted to regret the society that is no longer skipping down again. It's not the same with the all-powerful and internal beings of Hosmer. So, Tofil's just said in his own name, he sees the democratic revolution and it makes him sad.
But then he says, it is not the same with the all-powerful and eternal being whose eye necessarily envelopes the sum of things, and who sees distinctly, though at once, the whole human race and each man. It is natural to believe that what most satisfies the regard of this creator and preserver of men is not the singular prosperity of some but the greatest well-being of all. What seems to me decadence is therefore progress in his eyes. What wounds me as agreeable to him, equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just, and it's just as makes for its greatness and its beauty.
So, I assume this is one of the passages that when you said you want to talk about, this is one of the passages that really jumped out at me. And what I have struck by in Jeff, is the distinction between how Tofil sees the world versus how Tofil thinks God sees the world. And I'm not sure how to reconcile those. Yeah, I think that's right.
I mean, he wants to, as the next sentence is, I strive to enter into this point of view of God, and it is from there that I seek to consider and judge human things. I look at the world, right? And again, I think raising the question, can we even see it from God's point of view? God's point of view, it looks like the greatness and beauty of democracy is its justice to humanity as a whole, but there's a kind of injustice to great individuals.
And he begins the book by talking in the introduction about why write the book, well, to help develop a new political science for a world altogether new as he calls it. What's the goal of that political science, to direct democracy, toward the good away from the bad tendencies, and to preserve as much as possible what he calls the natural greatness of man. So, Tofil's political science is his liberalism as a whole and his concern for liberty is rooted in a concerned, preserved human greatness. And yet he ends the book by saying, it's not the greatness.
I'm not sure that's God's view, that is God concerned about individual human greatness like I am. So this is really interesting because we jump ahead to the providential aspect. But what we're going to discuss next is this new political science that's meant to handle this political revolution. So it seems like there's two aspects here.
One is attempt to enter this sort of plan of God or understand the plan of God and part of the way he's doing that, or maybe that's rubbing up against this idea of a new political science that can handle this democratic revolution. So how do we square these two sides of Tocqueville on the one hand, the part that's trying to understand and embrace God's apparent plan and the other one that's a political scientist? Yeah, Harry Mansfield calls this the Machiavellianism of Tocqueville. And I think he's referring to chapter 25 of the Prince.
What does God leave for us to do? And I mean, Tocqueville says at the introduction what he believes God has left for people in the democratic age to do. And he says don't despair. He admits it's a frightening spectacle.
This slide toward despotism or even sort of universal mediocrity. But he says Christian peoples in our day appear to me to offer a frightening spectacle. The movement that carries them along is already strong enough that it cannot be suspended. And yet it is not rapid enough to despair of directing it.
Their fate is in their hands and he repeats that at the end. Our fate is in our hands. But soon it will escape them. So what's our task?
And here he says, to instruct democracy if possible, to reanimate its beliefs, to purify its moorays, to regulate its movements, to substitute little by little the science of affairs for its inexperience and knowledge of its true interests or its blind instincts, to adapt its government to time and place, to modify it according to circumstances and men, such as the first duty imposed on those who direct society in our day. So it looks like God and his providence has allowed human beings some room to move democracy, to purify it, to direct it toward the best, including not really including any elements of aristocracy that's gone, but towards some of the natural elements of human greatness. God's left that task for us to do. But it's interesting, he's made it, he's making it hard on us, because everything is moving away from that.
That's where it is, right? And at the end of the book, it's very dark. One thing I'm struck by is in the notice to volume two, I think this is on page 399, maybe page 400. Toquil says, well, he seems to say that he's a friend of democracy.
I guess he doesn't quite say it explicitly. Given this ambivalent treatment of democracy, do you think that it's fair to say that it took it was a friend of democracy? Well, he's, he's a friend. He addresses what he calls in the head by page 400, severe words to the democratic side.
It's kind of like my how my wife is my friend. That's great. All right. She has, he says, few would dare to point out from afar the perils with which it threatens them, but really good friends who want what's good for you, perfectly willing to criticize the words to you.
Sometimes he's friendly to democracy. He really does admit things. So it's not, it's not pure criticism. And he very often chastises directly or indirectly aristocrats who have nothing but contempt for democracy.
And he says, you're missing some important things. One of the most beautiful passages in the book is his discussion of the democratic family and how naturally sweet it is, the relations between parents and children in a democratic, particularly fathers and children in a democratic family actually says they're, it's more natural. And aristocracy is much more artificial and cold and robs people of a certain happiness. So he's perfectly willing.
I always think of bringing up with my students to the sound of music, you know, like, what's, what's the Von Trapp family like for those children before Maria gets there? Right. And then when she gets there and so he's frequently pushing back against aristocratic objectors. He actually says at the beginning, there's two readers, there's two, at least two audiences, there's probably three audiences.
One is people who love democracy and see nothing wrong with it. To them, he has various of your words, those who aristocrats, the, of the oncian regime who want to roll democracy back and he says, you can't roll it back besides there's some good things. Then I think there's this middle reader who sees the problems with democracy, but realizes we can't go back to aristocracy. So he basically that criticism, and it doesn't embit her them and say, well, why do I have to live in this awful democratic world?
They say, okay, how do we make things better? And that's, I think that's tote those disposition. And he's trying to find those readers and speak to them. And one of the things that's missing, I think, in your point of this, and you're a family is one of the nicer things, greater justice, less inequality of wealth, less poverty, less ignorance, much less rule.
Less classical music, right? But that's the other side. So less excellence. So he's very clear about this, right?
So specifically in the arts and the fine arts, like you're saying, in our music, in our literature and philosophy, in politics, question mark, I don't know the answer there. But so we pay for it, right? There's this great media advertising effect on some of man's highest endeavors. Yeah, and it's a real question in my mind.
Is there any hope for the highest heights of the intellect in democracy? You know, can there be philosophers in democracy? You know, in the discussion of science, where he talks about the American and democratic turn in science, all democratic peoples start with a problem that they want to solve. And by solve, they mean make their life longer and more convenient, right?
And that's how they practice science. So everything is applied science. They only get the theoretical science if it's necessary to answer an applied question. And then he, he was just, and everybody's going to practice science, though, as in one form, another society will be technologized and everybody's going to be the latest app developer, and they're going to spend their time doing that stuff.
Then he raises the question, but will there anybody be left who just wants to contemplate the cosmos? And he says, I can't believe that there won't at least be some. So many people will be engaged in scientific things that there must be some. And he actually says the human mind just longs to know those things.
So there's gonna, there's just got to be a few. So I don't think he thinks even in the mediocrity that excellence will be impossible, but it's going to be much harder than it was under aristocracy. And in some ways, it's going to have to be, well, not in some ways, in many ways, it's going to have to be much more covert and hidden. And less authority, right?
If you know authority in society. Yeah, so in a way, safer, you could say and then in prior times, because it's not so prominent. But yeah, it was interesting. It's not even the same as true of literary works, right?
He says, there's gonna be no, there are no great authors in America. He says, because there is no freedom of mind. And then you get to, you know, you say, well, he never met Mark Twain, who comes right after him, you say, but Tofu would say, but even Mark Twain has to write in the vernacular has to be readable and consumable by democratic audiences or no one's gonna listen to what he has to say. Yeah, and even our, even any other example, like a Henry James, it's just he's too hybrid European to really count.
As an American author. Yeah, and nobody really reads that guy. That's right. That's right.
And students don't even really like reading Mark Twain that much. And so even if he is a great author and you're a scientist, you know, they just sort of read it and move on, you know, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't become such a core part of their identity, the way that, you know, reading Voltaire or something like that would be for a Frenchman. On this point, one of the things that strikes me, sorry, Jeff, was that I think it was Shrampe, who told me this, that Twain is actually one of the few Americans that foreigners read when studying America. So that's sort of interesting, sidebar.
But yeah, your point, I wanted to go about, there's not great freedom of thought here. He says, doesn't he say there's no country in the world where there's less freedom of thought than in America? I mean, you know, once the majority has decided, once the majority has decided, yeah, that's right. And I take this book and he says that he's an ardent lover of freedom.
I forget, I just read this, but in all ages, I would like freedom. But in a democratic age, I adore it. Like it's, so I take his project in part to be trying to keep freedom alive so that there is this possibility of excellence for a few. That's right.
So so he's, he loves the liberal and liberal democracy and thinks that the liberal democracy ought to take its bearings from the liberal part, because that freedom talks about that freedom makes possible moral and intellectual greatness. And he leaves open, there's just moments where if you can think freely, most of the time you'll end up with just public opinion dominating, but there might be a few people who could use that intellectual freedom to actually think for themselves. That's possible. I think some of those jarring statements, I mean, I've seen it in the classroom where you'd say to a student, you know, here's so close saying there's less freedom of thought America than any country in the world.
And that's so arresting that I do think he's very intentionally trying to arouse that in in his readers, which is, you know, obviously his audience was probably principally French, but in any events, right, making you stop and think these things through, I think it can have that kind of effect. This is connected with one of the other topics. We don't have to move on from this, but one of the other things we're talking about was what is tokavillion political science or what is the task of political science and nature democracy? Is this part of that project?
Is this part of what the political scientists ought to be doing? Because at least everywhere I study political science, the vast majority of political scientists think that the task is just to sort of objectively, and from the outside understand the character of the nature of politics, not to sort of be engaged in any kind of edifying endeavors. If, I mean, tokaville, if we're right that he's actually trying to do something, not just understand, that would be a fundamentally different way of looking at what political science does. No?
Yeah, it's so good. Sorry, Jeff. I agree with you, Greg. His rhetoric is so charming and enchanting that to read in his own right, the description of a project as founding a new political science is jarring when compared to the political scientists at APSA, you know, it's not fair.
It's not fair. Look, I mean, look, I would take, I would differ with you a little bit, Greg, on that. Part of political science today is this sort of value-free objective study of political phenomena, usually leading to some kind of quantitative study of something. The other part of political science, though, is very activist today.
Political theory, yeah, very good point, very is really activist. But what I think Tofu would say, but what is it active doing? It actually is intending to make the world more democratic. In all, everything that it does is an attempt to democratize society even more radically.
And of course, that's exactly the wrong thing for political science to be doing in Tofu's mind. Yeah, one thing that's struck me reading the first chapter of the second volume on the philosophic methods of the Americans and the comments about Cartesianism is he talks about how Cartesian, all the Americans, people studied in Europe and they enacted, but it's still pronounced in America and it struck me how uncartesian what he's doing is and his method is. And maybe one way to frame what we've been talking about is to think a little bit about how he's creating a sort of countermodel to the prevailing tendency or the prevailing philosophy of America and of this sort of democratic movement that's happening and trying to create a sort of model of how to think about politics that stands as some sort of counterweight to this. So in a way, the book itself is the provocation and the example that's going to push against these negative tendencies.
I don't have the words for it, but maybe you can comment a bit on how his method of political science compares to the sort of Cartesian thing that we see in the sort of value-free political science, though, not the activism. Yeah, as an identity Alex's question, where are the future political scientists as understood by Tofu to be found? How are they replenished? What once the project starts?
That's a hard one. Because it's not Greg, you know. Maybe because they're, I think they're found there to be found among people who love reading the Greeks and Romans. And that's what he actually he said.
They're found among lovers of the ancients. And he's like, Greg himself is an ancient as we can all see by his beard. And loves to do Spartan sort of things. That's right.
Yeah, look, I mean, he says, because democratic people's won't read aristocratic literature, it's too weird and foreign for them. But they will, but the Greeks and Romans were aristocratic in soul, but sort of more democratic in their politics, you know, Republican Romans, right, for example, or Athenians, they'll read those and they need to read them because they need to have that kind of elevation and examples of greatness. And people who love that and read that and have that, you know, two talks lives, people who read that and that attracts them and grabs them, students like that, those are the kind of people Tofu is looking for. David, don't you read that with your kids?
Don't you read in two talks lives with your children? I'm not doing that yet. Oh, I thought you were I was serious. I'm only three years old.
Oh, okay. Hey, kids, Spartan's handled this when they were three. Yeah, exactly. I've been reading Thucydides to my newborn.
I have 11 week old and as far as she can tell, it's no different than like good night moon or hop on top. She just sits there, you know, once she has a mind, I'm gonna have to sort of transition to lighter fare. Yeah, or not, just keep it going. Yeah, what can I have a kid?
He's a know about plagues. Yeah, so speaking of that, so great. I mean, Jeff, let's get to the dark. Let's get to the dark aspects of Tocqueville toward the end.
Yeah, I suppose we have to do right. That's how he ends. Yeah, this is I can talk a question about this as an educator for you. How do he describe what's going on?
The book ends are interesting. You spoke about it at the beginning of the show, but contrasting how it begins and how it ends. How do students react in those classes when you're able to get through the whole microstate America to the end? The ones who are paying attention will come up to me after class and say, this can't be true.
Oh, okay. We have to stop this. How do we stop this? They don't.
Okay. So do they see? Do they do they? You're reading, especially if he was falling.
I can't call. I was reading parts of this and you think immediately of what's being manufactured in Silicon Valley. These kinds of lullabies and I just want to be comfortable and have a motor gum of pleasure not be disrupted too much and carry on with my life. It's just amazing how Tocqueville was able to see into the future so perceptively.
So do students, do they trace it to what's going on today? Well, when they say, oh, this can't be true, or do they say, look, this simply is not the case. It doesn't accord with the reality on the ground. No, they say they see it.
Again, the perceptive ones see it and they say, we've got to stop it. I mean, they live on college campuses. Our college campus is actually relatively healthy, morally, I would say. So we still have elements of people care about freedom, people care about greatness.
These are things Tocqueville would like, but look, so many college campuses, they experience this themselves, treat students like a herd of timid and industrious animals as Tocqueville calls them and regulate their lives in every detail, except letting them do whatever they want, otherwise without making any moral judgments, which is perfectly in line with the school master state. So they live it, they experience it. I always bring up those kind of examples from some residential life on down. They get it.
But when they see it in society, the ones who care about, you know, again, that human greatness resonates with them, they say, but we have to stop this. And the question is always, is it too late? It looks to them being young people who were born in 2000 and later, it looks to them like maybe it is too late. So there's a lot of despair and anger at the end of class.
Yeah, at least satisfied and little by saying he saw this 150 years ago. So I don't know. And then they graduate. So you had their college career on the outside.
I know. Yeah. That's right. It's on page 663 of the M.S.
field. I mean, it's all of page 663. I guess it starts at the bottom of 662. So this is chapter six entitled the, what kind of despotism democratic nations have to fear.
You could read the whole thing. I'll just read one or two sentences of if that's okay. So above the so about an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring there. So ours, enjoyments and watching over their fate is absolute detailed regular far seeing and mild.
It would resemble paternal power if like that. It had for its object to prepare men for manhood. But on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood. It likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves.
It willingly works for their happiness. But it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that. It provides for their security for seas and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their states, divides their inheritances. Can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?
And so it's wonderful. And I just have to thank here Google Bank of America, Nike, and a few other of our top corporations for really proving to feel right these days. Unless that's too dark, Jeff, I don't want to be that dark for our young listeners, but I have to agree with some of your students. Yeah, I mean, but that's not how it ends, right?
The next chapter is, okay, so what do we do about it? And it gives lots of interesting provocative thoughts. That's where he talks about what we have to do about it is cultivate a love of freedom. That's almost idolatrous.
Orders on the idolatrous, this love of freedom, because you have to adore it. And then lots of other ways in which we can have a healthy society that has authority in a kind of noble self-government is the best that we can do. But it is something we can do. And he doesn't think that all hope is lost in America.
And I think there he has some high praise for America in hopes that the Europeans will adopt something like some of these American mores that he saw. And again, we've got kids here. Small town, townships, associational life, all that families that have religious piety that elevates souls as TOCAL talks about is so important to rise above commercialism. We've got students like that.
And there are a lot of those people and people who aren't like that see that other students and say, maybe there is something to that. So I actually have the final assignment for my classes. This is the final thing they do as seniors. Write a paper, tell me three things you'll do when you graduate to make American democracy healthier.
That's good. I always get it. I say and keep a copy of this and read it 15 years from now. That's great.
Well, our audience members, if you haven't picked up a copy of the America, I think it was at Mansfield says it's at once the greatest book ever written on democracy and also the greatest book ever in America. And he came to the United States, Jeff knows better than all of us, but he came to study the prison system. Did he not supposedly supposedly? Oh, supposedly.
Okay. Well, so you think that was just subterfuge to get over? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And he did study him Gustav de Beaumont, who was his traveling companion did. And by the way, Beaumont, if people haven't read it, he wrote a wonderful book, a very harsh indictment of slavery called Marie, which was sort of a novel slash sociological meditation on slavery, worth reading for sure. And Tofo himself, as people probably know, was a very harsh critic of slavery, particularly American slavery.
So that's Dr. Ockens, so they did have these other projects going on, but they came to see democracy. Jeff, well, we have you. Can you what's Tocqueville's other great work?
How does it relate to democracy in America? It's not often discussed. Right. The Francine regime and the French Revolution, that's right, because other great work.
And there it's interesting because he didn't change his mind. In that book, he actually refers to things he wrote in Democracy in Americans, I still believe this. So it's an analysis of, as the title suggests, the French Revolution and what effect it's had and sort of a history of it. And it's, I kind of think of it as a historical application of the insights in Democracy in America.
Great, great read and great to pair it with Democracy in America. I think we're other good things too, memoir and paparism and his journals of his travels in America, among many other things. Yeah. So should we transition to our mailbag question?
I was thinking maybe before Jeff could tell us a little bit about what sorts of things he's working on with Ashbrook. Yeah, talk to us about the Ashbrook Center. Yeah, sure. So it's Ashbrook named after John Ashbrook, who was a congressman who died when he was running for Senate in Ohio in 1982, his friends started this thing up.
Originally just to be an archive for his papers, Ronald Reagan came in 1983 and inaugurated the center. And since then, it's really we've grown tremendously. So we started with a lecture series, added an undergraduate program, kind of honors program in history and government. That's what Greg teaches in.
And that's what I also teach in Ashbrook scholars. We started with back in 1984 with about 10. And now we've got about 125 and it's growing pretty dramatically. Kids from all around the country who want to come and a great books rooted liberal education for people who are interested in history, politics, political economy.
And then we've got programs for teachers around the country, a master's program on campus, and then seminars around the country, all rooted in studying primary documents of American history. So read the Federalist Papers, read the Constitution, read Lincoln, read, you know, Woodrow Wilson and just sit around and talk about them, seminar style. That master's program, the MAG program, Master's Art in History and Government. We have classes on campus, we also have online synchronous classes.
And so teachers all over the country are students in that program. So it's really quite convenient for high school and junior high school teachers of history and civics and social studies. And we teach some interesting things in there, right? I've taught the Supreme Court.
What have you taught? I taught the education of Henry Adams. I taught a course on the roots of American republicanism, so Locke and Montesquieu. And this fall, I'll be teaching a course on rhetoric in American politics.
Yeah, so kind of a really interesting variety. And we've those have grown amazingly. We started the seminar, well, the MAG program started in 2005, and then our teaching American history seminar started in 2014. And again, we started with about 10 of those.
And this next year, we're doing over 200 around the country. So it's been a huge growth area for us. The whole idea is right. We say we're trying to strengthen constitutional self-government, that's our mission.
And it's really by educating people in history of the United States and in founding principles. And it's just sort of a habits of reflection and choice from Federalist Number One, that we think is necessary for good citizenship. So we're trying to educate, educate good Americans. So one question I have about Ashbrook is I'm looking at your, Greg is always talking about how he's this big head honcho at Ashbrook.
How he's this big sort of, and now I look at your office, it's beautiful. You got the flag there, framed picture. Nice. It looks like you have Central Air, but Greg is in this basement concrete slab with a window unit.
I'm just wondering, where's Greg really on the teching order here? Well, the people who really have power, you know, the military and intelligence type guys, like Greg, they're always in underground bunkers. There we go. It's like, logically, it's playing out in Greg's beard, Alex.
I'm just glad to see that you guys still have room for greatness high and low, just evidence of your appearance in your offices. But all right, so let's should we go to the mailbag questions? Yeah, I think that's a great idea. All right.
So we got a figure. We put these on Twitter. So, after King and Bowling Brook, he's a big fan of the show, asked Ashbrook, took film most properly be referred to as a political scientist, political philosopher or a statesman. He's less empirical, quote unquote than he presents himself.
I'm curious on what you sense that means for his thought. That's a great question. He presents himself as a political scientist, right? A new political science.
And here's what it's going to look like. I think he's a political philosopher. There's parts in the book where the status of philosophy in Tocqueville's in the book and in Tocqueville in general is a hard question. I mean, he himself engaged in politics and always was engaged in politics.
On the other hand, he was engaged in philosophy too. There's a lot of stuff in Tocqueville smells like Aristotle, and sort of the modern Aristotle. But I think personally Tocqueville's a modern, if we have to say between ancient and moderns. But I think he's a political philosopher.
I think he's trying to think through the fundamental questions of politics and trying to give some answer. But I'm not sure if he thinks the contemplative life ultimately can transcend politics in a way that some ancient political philosophers might have. But still, I think he's a political philosopher. Yeah, I was struck by the role of history in the passage that Greg read earlier.
My second question is from Joey Beretta. He's a PhD candidate at Hillsdale. He asked, what are Tocqueville's thoughts on the free press? Specifically, we tend to focus on the free press good on a local level.
But how does the nationalization of the press breathe the ill effects Tocqueville warns about in democracy? Yeah, that's a good question. I know Joey Beretta. He shouldn't be asking questions like that.
Yeah, I mean, Tocqueville talks about the local press as an essential element in doing things like promoting associations, right? You can get together and voluntarily associations because you know what's going on in your town. How do you know that through your local newspaper? And it's not as partisan because it's communing to be based as national media like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
Yeah, I think he would lament profoundly the decline of local newspapers and they're vanishing extremely rapidly. Or we have the national times cassette here. I have a subscription. I read it.
But two thirds of it now is imported stuff from wire services that is not actually connected to our local town. It's a profound problem. And I don't know if local blogs can replace that because there's one source of community news in the old days. Now there's multiplicity on it.
So yeah, I think the nationalization of the press and the polarization that that brings and the kind of disconnect from your local place is a profound problem and is a product of unhealthiness but also breeds unhealthiness, individualism for example, right? You don't have to get out and know your neighbors are being engaged in your local township. You just live in a place but don't actually live there and do your living there. Tocqueville definitely wants people, he says the townships are the primary schools of freedom.
If we're not engaged in the township, we're not learning the fundamentals of self-government. That actually connects with a question I had he talks about wealth being a cruise in small places. Anybody who has the know-how can develop a kind of wealth and it's struck me that it doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Obviously people can come wealthy out of nowhere but we do see more and more wealth concentrated in the hands of a few people and it's very much on a sort of these sort of national and multinational corporations.
Does that seem to you to be a sense of we're somehow coming out the back end of what he's saying? I wonder when we're talking about history in this province, does it seem like maybe we're reaching a stage where some of the observations about democracy here or have run their course and maybe we're entering something new or do we have to push back against that is that part of the problem? Yeah, Tocqueville actually talks about it when he talks about the sort of presages, raises the question, look, we know that there's this industrial revolution going on. It's going to lead to large-scale manufacturing corporations and he talks about, okay, could that actually give rise to a new aristocracy?
So he's aware of that and he says it will have a bad effect because the people who run the corporations, the big corporations will be kind of like aristocrats and the people who work there could end up being something like the old peasants. But he doesn't think it's going to actually reestablish aristocracy in the full sense of the word. But it can have some very deleterious effects and he talks about that in the book. So he's aware of that problem and thinks that it's something that has to be pushed back against.
So for example, he says what associations, like unions, should be empowered to regulate things in the workplace so that workers have a sense of self-government even in their own workplace, even though they work for this massive corporation. Yeah, I wish somebody would send a memo to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey on that point. So final question from Tyler McQueen. He handles at Reel Tyler McEw, so this is the Reel Tyler McQueen.
He pointed out that we asked Jim Caesar a while back if Lincoln was a founder or refounder of the American regime and he wants to know what you think to see how far the apple fell from the tree. He wants to know if I think Lincoln was a founder? Yeah, sort of refounder of the American regime. Tyler shouldn't ask those kind of questions either.
That's a hard one. Refounder, not a founder. I don't think Lincoln thought his job was to complete the task of the founders. So bringing the foundering to fulfillment.
That counts as refounding, I guess, but bringing it to completion. Yeah, that's his project. He never talked anything. He never talked any other way about it.
And I think he really believed that. Jeff, at this point, we usually ask our guests, I'm very excited. It's always my favorite part of the show, lightning round questions. So if we can do one of this aspect of the show, it's the only part you guys will let me handle, other than scheduling and all the grunt work.
All the listeners really want to know what your favorite color is. I like what it's a right. All right, here they come. All right, who is your you can pass by the way, I'm gonna answer them.
But any event I'll ask. So who's your favorite philosopher? Oh, my favorite philosopher. Aristotle, not bad.
Not bad. What's your favorite work of philosophy? Oh, that might not be the same. Aristotle's, Aristotle's politics.
Okay, very good. What's your favorite work of literature? That's so hard. It just depends.
That's so hard. What's talking to you right now? What's talking to me right now? Yeah, every 10 years, I reread the Gulag Archipelago.
And I'm just finishing it now. Who's your favorite American political actor to read? Well, Lincoln's, Lincoln's obvious. And I think so.
I mean, if you get it. But, you know, you know, it's fun to read. Very gold water. Oh, very cool.
He's a really thoughtful guy and has some great lines. I mean, Harry Jaffa. Even very gold water himself. Okay.
Who do you think the best politician in your lifetime has been? Ronald Reagan. No question in my mind. Where's your favorite place you've ever visited?
The Church of Santo del De Croce in Florence. Very nice. Very nice. Is that where Machiavelli is entombed?
No comment. Yeah. I think doesn't say it, but not that this is why you like it. But such a man, no one could praise or no one could praise such a man's official.
Such a legend. The Latin translates to such a name. No praise is worthy. Right.
Right. Give me pets. Yes. Swiss catalog.
We're dog people. What's its name? Ella. Ella.
Why? My daughter got to name her. Okay. Fair enough.
What was your first car? 1973 Oldsmobile custom cruiser station wagon with corduroy interior and rear facing back seat. Rear facing back seat. That sounds like how did you how have you let go of that bad boy?
I hope it's still garage somewhere. We we actually had to pay someone to take it. That's great. The only time I have a police record because of that car.
It's an interesting story. Probably too long for this podcast. Is the fashion police for those? I got to over and unbeknownst to me, my friends had taken the judge didn't believe this, but oh no.
Unbeknownst to me, my friends had taken out my driver's license and they had modified the 67 to a different number. So it looked like I had tried to fake my license. I handed it to the police officer not knowing this when he pulled me over in that station wagon and came back to me and said, we have problems to buy the car. And I ended up going to court over this and was convicted.
I have a I have a record. Did you do? Does your disaster know this? I've never revealed this fact in public until now.
Oh man. Everyone's gonna know now. Except he's a terrible friends. I can't find him.
Alex. He's a physician now and I can find him later and say, come on, man. You're an upright human being. You're an upright man.
Please tell the truth. I don't remember that at all. Yeah, that's funny. And you know who you are if you're listening to this.
What do you think you would have become if you hadn't become a professor? Probably somebody in finance. I would have been a hot richer and a lot less happy. Okay.